The official launch of IOTA will occur on July 11:
After several months of testing and optimization we are finally at the last chapter of the 'beta phase', ready to venture into the real world with IOTA's novel technology.
http://forum.iotatoken.com/t/iota-gui-and-launch-date/379
IOTA is a new and novel micro-transaction crypto-token optimized for the Internet-of-Things. It aims to become the backbone of Economy-of-Things and the world standard for micro-transactions. Its creators maintain they've achieved remarkable results in such important areas as: scalability, storage, bandwidth and fees (actually there are no fees, just like Steem). IOTA’s design diverged radically from other blockchain crypto-currencies. It's a blockchain but without blocks - it makes use of Directed Acyclic Graph.
A very comprehensive explanation about IOTA's place in the crypto-space:
http://forum.iotatoken.com/t/eli5-iota-vs-slock-it/229
For more information, please refer to the new website, the forum, or the white-paper.
(Actually their website looks quite amazing and the speed of development is quite impressive, considering the limited budget they have.)